Wall Street Journal columnist Alan Murray wishes President Bush would read the work of Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter. According to Murray, Porter, like Bush, "believes competition can solve much of what ails the health care industry," but Porter believes that "the president is making a big mistake by focusing mostly on cost." Porter believes that the "real problem in health care ... is a lack of good information on quality and outcomes" and that, "without that information, any effort to drive down costs through competition will backfire," Murray writes. In addition, Murray says, Porter believes that the "focus ... should be on value" because the "scandal of today's health care is that the quality is often shoddy." Porter also believes that, although "much of the effort to drive up value needs to happen in the private sector," the "government should take the lead in measuring health care quality and outcomes," according to Murray. He concludes, "If competition is going to rescue the U.S. health care system, it will have to be competition on price and quality" (Thanks to American HealthLine for the excerpts).
Posted by schwitz at February 1, 2006 05:08 PM | TrackBack